A Goose's Dream
by Whipped Coffee
Summary: A bus. A cottage. A pond of dreams. "Can't you see Neji? All you have to do is close your eyes."


**A Goose's Dream  
><strong>_close your eyes and believe_

_/ /_** O1.**

_What are dreams? We constantly pine for things we can't have, trying to reach the stars and the moon. We try to reach out and we try to grab and in the end it somehow gets away from us. It floats to somewhere far away, somewhere out of sight. It gets further the closer you get and closer the further you get. We dream when we are asleep and we dream when we are awake._

_How much dreaming can it take to make our dreams come true?_

_Perhaps it will never come true. Perhaps we are destined for failure and our destiny was already written before we met. It was all due to that one string of fate that we met and even though all the time we've spent together was like a faraway dream, I wouldn't want to forget it. Because if I forget, then you would forget, and that would mean that we both forgot and the time we've spent together would cease to exist._

_So I may be foolish but I hold those memories close to my heart, because they are dear to me. And I hope they are dear to you because without you, I wouldn't be where I am now, and you wouldn't be where you are now._

_So wherever you are, I hope that you will dream like I do and that you will hope for a better future._

_This is me, a goose in the pond of swans, dreaming._

/ / /

He had these wonderful pearl eyes, and sat next to me.

I didn't really think that much about it in the beginning. He was just one of the many people who I thought would just pass by me in life, never really looking back after our first hello. There wouldn't even be a goodbye at the end, just maybe a quick nod, a quick flick of the wrist like that was enough for a farewell.

I thought he was just like the rest of them, hurriedly trying to get by and trying to get to his dreams before anyone else could as if it was a race. But then I thought to myself, why? Why would he even be here if he was like the rest of them? Wouldn't he be elsewhere, working hard to achieve his dreams? To achieve his goals and outshine the rest of his companions?

But I hadn't thought about that at the time.

So in the end, I prepared myself as I sat beside him, playing with my iPod that rested on my bag. I didn't even know what I was listening to as I stared straight ahead at the seat in front of me. It was like a bunch of mumbling with an instrumental thrown into the background. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine peace and tranquility in my mind that wasn't possible to achieve in real life. There would be a field of green, with scattered daisies to decorate the great plain. There would be one cottage, a homey, comfy cottage that would house a family of four. There would be a mother, a father, a sister and her brother who would occasionally eat out on the picnic table the father built a long time ago, the time when he met the mother there in the vacation cottage.

There would be no disturbance, and the family would live there happily ever after.

I opened my eyes, finding myself greeted with the darkness in the bus.

That type of happiness would not last. The children would grow up and become tainted by the society of today, and they would move away, far from the ideal home that their parents tried so hard to foster into their children's life. The children would soon change, replacing their morals with the cheap morals of today. They would forget the life they had and try to become who they weren't.

They would forget their parents and move on with their lives while their parents tried to maintain their life even after their children left.

And they wouldn't meet after that.

Because in the end, both sides of the story dies painfully and pitifully, their regrets and sorrows buried deep in their bodies, so deep that they couldn't find it in themselves to see each other.

And the cycle begins again, when the next couple finds the abandoned cottage in the perfect green field of happiness.

I stared at my iPod, only to find that it had ran out of battery. Not that I minded. After all, I hadn't even noticed what I was listening to. I pulled out the earphones from my ears, and listened to the wonderful silence that the bus held as it traveled across the bumpy terrain.

That had been the story that Mika had told me.

Mika was an interesting girl.

She was the girl who every boy liked, who every girl wanted to be. She was sweet, kind, nice, pretty, but most of all, she was caring. She was the type of girl to stop by an elderly and help them across the street. She was the type of girl to drop everything she would be doing to help someone else. She was the type that everyone adored, be it a teacher, student, mother, father, and so on. Everyone knew who she was, and everyone practically kissed the floor she walked on. She had the perfect smile that almost seemed to bewitch the entire school. She had the perfect laugh that sounded like bells and she had the eyes that could capture anyone's hearts.

But no matter how friendly she seemed, I could always see it. The way her eyes were lonely when she was with her friends, the way she stared outside the window during class and the way her lips smiled but her eyes didn't. There were times where she blanked out with her friends, deep in thought. Her eyes were clouded and there was a troubled expression that worried her friends. But she would always wave it off whenever someone asked, and then all was well again.

All was well, until she started coming to school with bruises.

Everyone pretended they hadn't noticed, but I knew. I knew that deep inside, they were wondering who would hurt their angel, who would dare hurt the one person who was perfect. They all wondered, but no one ever asked to find out.

So when I stared, I saw how she laughed, how she smiled, how she talked. How she did all that and yet her eyes were scary with emptiness, how her eyes were so blank and lonely.

Because I knew.

I knew that Mika was a lonely girl who came to school with bruises.

But despite all what I knew, we weren't friends. We had never talked, even though we were in the same class. I didn't like her, but I didn't dislike her either. It was the same thing for her, as well. We were strangers, but it was that one day where she had taken the liberty to talk to me, out of the blue.

It was the day where I found her crying behind the school, with a bruised arm and a black eye.

I had been on duty and was taking out the trash for my class. I had walked past her without hesitating, without bothering to ask if she was okay. She wasn't my friend, so I thought I had no reason to show any concern for her.

I didn't have many friends to begin with.

_"You're not going to ask?"_

Her voice was a bit weak from crying, I suppose. Her sobs were quite loud when I arrived, but the moment she saw me, she tried to hide them. It hadn't worked when I threw out the trash, but she seemed to be better when I turned around to walk back to my classroom.

We were the type of strangers who ignored each other despite the circumstances where a normal person would offer to help.

So in the end I hadn't bother to answer her question and only walked away.

Thinking back, I regretted my actions. If I had reached out a helping hand, things would have turned out different. Turned out for the better. But in the end I didn't, and that was how fate made it.

A violent cough from behind me broke me out of my thoughts. I turned my head slightly, to see an old lady coughing into her hand. People were staring at her with distaste, as if she had woken them up from their sleep.

I reached into my bag and pulled out an unopened water bottle, handing it to the woman behind me.

"Thank you," she managed to say in-between her coughs.

A while later, the bus was silent again.

Maybe that was why I chose to leave. I wanted to find the place that Mika talked so wonderfully about. I wanted to find the place that made her smile the way she did, that made her glisten with happiness in her eyes and made her sigh with a feeling that I couldn't understand.

It was selfish of me, but I thought that if I found it, it would make me happy like that too.

/ / /

Morning came faster than I thought.

The sun beamed at me through the windows, hitting me with a warmth that I hadn't felt in a while. I cracked open my eye to see everyone else still snoozing, a snore coming from the back of the bus.

I closed my eye again, allowing myself to be hypnotized by the snore. I felt a shift next to me and then it was still again. I could hear the soft breathing that my seatmate was making and that with the snoring lulled me to sleep again.

The wondrous sleep that could pull me out of the reality that I despised so much.

The next time I woke up, there were murmurs around the bus.

"What time is it?"

"How long until we arrive?"

I chose to ignore the soft murmurs as I chewed on some mint gum. There was the sound of a baby crying in the front, and the mother was shushing it. People chose to ignore the cries and everything else around them as the bus hit another bump on the road.

We were all similar, the people on the bus. Including me; we were all running away from something, whether it was an emotional, a physical, a psychological problem. There was a bus; this bus, that took one far, far from the city, to a secluded place one wouldn't even dream of. It was the escape bus, some people called it. Others called it the ghost bus. The people who rode it were never seen afterwards.

We were all the same and heading to the same destination, yet we were all different. With one look, I could tell why people were here. The woman with the baby in the front was ostracized. The baby was either illegitimate or the result of a rape. Instead of ridding it like her family must have demanded, she must have decided to take matters into her own hand and take care of the baby herself. It wasn't a rare thing, but it was admirable. The man who had been snoring had nowhere else to go and had decided to take the easy way out of life by moving somewhere that didn't expect so much of him. The old woman behind me was probably heading to the home where she grew up as a child, to revisit before her time was up. There were so many people with so many different stories, and we were all heading to the same place.

Mika was the only one I knew who was so fascinated by other people. Her eyes would always widen whenever she made up the life stories of the people who passed by, her lips would always curve up into an angelic smile, her fingers would curl tightly around mine when she got excited.

And yet, we weren't friends.

I felt him shift next to me, noticing his phone dropping on the floor as a result. I watched his long hair cascade over his shoulder, a few strands hitting my leg as he bent down to retrieve his phone.

"Gum?" I offered.

There was no way of brushing teeth on the bus.

He stared at the pack of gum, as if wondering whether or not it was safe. I was ready to pull away, knowing fully well that he would reject it in the end.

And to my surprise, he reached out and took a piece.

"Thank you," came his gruff voice, as I saw him unwrap the gum.

I didn't reply back.

For the rest of the ride, there was a serene, almost peaceful silence between us.

/ / /

The second time I met Mika was on the rooftop.

It was two weeks after I saw her crying. She was staring mindlessly out the fence, as if wondering how it felt to jump down, how it felt to have the wind in her hair and her face and how it felt to fly. She looked so blank, so lost, so empty that my heart moved for her, for her whom I didn't even know, for her whom I thought was only going to be another person who walked through my life.

For her, whom I had no relation with.

I had been looking for a place to eat lunch. The cafeteria was too crowded, the classroom was too noisy and my only solace was the empty rooftop that was claimed to be haunted by a ghost. It came as a surprise to me when I saw her looking so vulnerable.

She had been surprised, as well.

I breathed in the fresh air as I stepped down off the bus. The sixteen hour drive from the city to the middle of nowhere was worth it, even when I got cramps sitting in the same spot for hours. I moved out of the way quickly, letting the others climb down the bus and enjoy the fresh air.

It was different.

I liked it.

It was expected that everyone would scatter once the bus drove off. Everyone walked off, to continue their own lives, to continue their new lives and to continue their old lives. I stood there, watching everyone leave, watching their footprints that they made with each step they took. It wasn't long before they were gone, before they left a whole range of different footprints.

To my surprise, there was only one other person who also stood still, staring at the others.

When I watched him watched the others, my heart moved. It was the same feeling I felt when I was watching Mika. The expression on his face was the same, the loneliness, the emptiness, the blankness; it was all so similar that it was scary. My heart moved again.

"Do you want to fly?"

The words came out of my mouth without me realizing it. It was only after he turned towards me with only blankness in his eyes that I noticed my mouth was still a bit open and that my heart still moved.

"Flying..." He said, looking up at the sky. He didn't seem to mind my randomness. "It would be wonderful."

I followed his gaze and looked up at the sky. A few pigeons were circling the air before flying off in a flock. I looked back at him, only to see that he was still looking at the sky with a desirous look.

It reminded me of Mika.

Mika, the girl who longed to fly with the birds in the sky.

"What is your name?" I asked.

He looked back at me. The desirous look was gone, as if it hadn't even been there in the first place. Instead it was replaced with something mysterious. His whole posture seemed to change, like the look in his eye. It was like he was another person.

"Hyuuga Neji."

It reminded me of her.

It reminded me of her so much, that my heart moved again.

/ / /

"Where are you going, Neji?"

I didn't realize how, but in the end, it was just me and Neji moving along the road, sidestepping the fallen twigs and occasional logs that got in the way.

"Somewhere," he replied back absentmindedly, staring straight ahead.

The lonely, cold, empty boy who I saw under the sunlight was gone. Instead, he was replaced by a strong, determined man who wouldn't disclose anything about himself. It was as if the boy who I saw before didn't exist. Like a figment of my imagination, like something that I had mistakenly seen in the muddy, brown waters.

We were silent for the rest of the trek. We had passed along a few shops that were set up for tourists, only stopping to buy some food along the way. A few minutes spent in each, and we were moving again.

It was much like what I had pictured him: fast pace, moving ahead in life without glancing back to take a look. Without glancing back to sniff the flowers and to enjoy the sun.

_"Tenten, you have one life. Live it. Follow the signs, and be happy."_

It was the first time she said my name, and the only time in the short relationship that we had with each other. I didn't understand at the time, about what she meant by following the signs. It seemed out of place and inserted weirdly in a sentence that would otherwise be cliché advice.

It was only afterwards that I understood what Mika said.

We exited the path with trees and duck under a few branches to emerge in what I had viewed absolute peace and tranquility. It was true; the only peace and tranquility that existed was only in my mind. The area that was supposed to be green with grass was now overgrown with weeds. The daisies were shriveled up, but not entirely dead from the lack of sunlight as a result of the taller weeds. The cottage was overgrown with vines, and the picnic that I imagined was dirtied with soil and bugs.

The happiness I wanted to feel wasn't there. Instead, there was only a sense of disappointment and yet I wasn't surprised. Whatever this place held, disappeared when Mika did.

And to that, was only more disappointment for the fact that I would never feel what Mika did.

"It is not that bad," he spoke up next to me after a moment of silence.

I tried to not look surprised, but my emotions got the better of me when I stared at him. "What are you talking about?" I tried to not let him sense my doubtfulness.

"It is covering it up," he said, not looking at me. It was like he was staring at something far, something far and out of reach. Something that he couldn't touch. "What you are looking for," he said. "It is covered up."

I tried to decode what he was saying, but to no avail, I couldn't understand. He was enigmatic, much like how Mika was when I first met her.

They were so similar that it hurt.

He walked ahead of me, knowing to not crush the withered daisies. He headed towards the cottage and I stared at his back. He was almost graceful, knowing when to pick up one foot as his other stepped down on a safe patch of weed, away from the poor daisies that couldn't grow. It was funny how he hadn't made footprints on the ground and yet, it felt like he was stomping on my moving heart.

The creak of the old door brought me back to my senses as I saw him walk into the darkness. I could only stare and wonder why he was doing this, why he followed me and why he hadn't given up.

This. This was what made him different than Mika.

Something flickered from one of the windows. It was a light – he had somehow managed to get a light going in the dark cabin. That somehow seemed to spark my legs and before I knew it, I ended up in front of the cottage. I entered it slowly, not sure whether the wood was still stable or rotten from all the years that no one looked after it. Walking towards him and the light, I breathed in the smell of wood.

It was oddly calming.

"Dusty," he had said, swiping a hand on the desk. He held the lit lamp close to him, avoiding the random objects that were thrown messily on the floor.

I walked towards him slowly, taking in the scent and the view. I stopped in front of an odd drawing. There was four stick figures, each labeled Mama, Papa, Mika, Yuki. I continued to stare, as if I was trying to engrave it into my mind. I had known all along – her silly smiles, her random crying, her bruises...

She was the daughter in the story.

She was the one who left.

She was the one who had gotten corrupted.

It had been obvious. The third time I met her, was only five days after our encounter on the rooftop. We hadn't talked that time. Instead, we stared at each other before I turned around and left. After all, she was the one who was there first.

It was around 8 pm after school when I saw her stumble out of a bar. I had been out buying some medicine. The flu had been going around, and I thought I should have been prepared. Instead, my discovery of the night was of Mika holding the wall of the bar, and puking on the streets. No one stopped to help her. No one stopped to look at her. Instead, people continued walking on, having better things to do than to help a drunk school girl feel better.

I had only stared at her, not moving to help. It was too late by the time I had moved – a man came out of the bar and ushered her back inside. She hadn't resisted – instead, she laughed that tinkling laugh that everyone loved, and smiled that smile that everyone loved.

In the five minutes that I stared, I spent another five minutes contemplating on what happened. When I got home, it was somehow 10 pm.

The next day Mika was absent from school. The day after that, she was also absent. No one seemed to be worried and no one asked. It was like she was forgotten, like she had never really been there in the first place. The angel that they all loved didn't exist. She was a part of everyone's hazy memories.

But when she came back the third day, everyone greeted her like nothing happened. It was funny, how humans worked.

As I kept staring at the childish picture on the wooden wall, I felt my heart move.

_Mika, I'm here._

* * *

><p> / /

Well, I'm back. Although this isn't what you guys were probably expecting, I'm just trying to brush up on my writing without butchering 6MWTHF with my edits and random tinkering. This will be a short story, like less than or equal to five chapters. Short enough, right? Most likely a three chapter story. Ignore my horrible grammar mistakes.

Just so we're clear, it's first person from Tenten's POV, and yes, I have made her... so somber. Haha. Oh dear. Mika is an OC, just because, well, I thought it'll be fun to experiment with a character we don't know. Hm, so what else...

Well nothing comes to mind now, but I'll be sure to finish this before school starts. And hopefully finish my edits before school starts... It's 2:30AM and I'm quite hungry. Huh.

Hope you enjoyed reading(:


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